It has been a very Proustian weekend, one about nostalgia and the realization that moments that you lived through with complete frivolity, were actually powerful turning points in your life. And now these moments are lost forever, except for maybe the memory of a smell. The time that is haunting me is the late 90's and the scent? Helmut Lang. In 2000, just at the time the tides were turning against them, the Helmut Lang company introduced a line of fragrances, starting with the unisex duo Eau de Cologne and Eau de Parfum created by perfumer Maurice Roucel and then shortly afterwards Cuiron composed by Françoise Caron. Like Lang's clothes Eau de Cologne was clean and simple yet lush and sexual at the same time. It was sweet and powdery enough for women with a strong base of amber and almond, so much so that some cultists were comparing it to the long lost Belle Epoque masterpiece, Jicky. But like a classic fougère, (the fresh citrus, the herbal lavender) it was complex too with touches of oakmoss and coumarin so that it perfectly suited a man. Especially a man in a suit. Its as if Roucel has created a masterpiece of musk .